Recently one of my jr. high 1st years can't stop shouting, "This is it!" whenever he sees me. I thought he was actually trying to say something the first two or three times (just goes to show you how much I don't care about the rest of the world....) but eventually realized it was just some English he heard somewhere and was repeating. Kind of like the rash of elementary school kids who went around chanting, "Yes we can!" during the last presidential election.
It finally clicked in my head what the kid was talking about when I walked by a display outside a book/DVD store. While I'm not a fan of the office of the president, and kind of hate politics in general, I have to say I'm slightly insulted that Obama's catchphrase has been so quickly erased from the minds of Japanese children. To be replaced by Michael Jackson.
Last Thursday the kids went out to collect aluminum cans to sell to get money to buy flowers for graduation. The (super cute) nurse and I went out to take pictures of them as they came back all loaded down with bags of beer and coke cans from the neighborhood houses. On his way out of the school gate the same kid passed by us and shouted...guess what?
Yep.
"This is it!"
...and looked at me like he had just done some thing amazingly cool and I should be really happy about it.
The nurse blinked a few times and looked at me like, 'What's that all about?' and I sighed and yelled after the kid,
"Do you understand what you're saying?" in Japanese.
"No!" (also Japanese) he answered. And kept on walking.
*sigh*
No. Of course not.
I was right. "Yes we can!" all over again.
The nurse turned to me and asked, "So....what does it mean?" and I said, "Well....um...it means....." and realized, 'shit! it can mean like 8 million different things depending on the context!' Of course, I have no idea what the context is since I don't even know if "This is it" is the title of the dead King of Pop's song, or just his DVD. (The only time I knew anything about Michael Jackson was in 6th grade when he had that video where all the people's faces morphed into each other's. And that was a big secret since everyone thought I was way too cool for stuff other people like. I can't remember the name of the song, or the tune, just the trippy looking people melting from one to the next.) I couldn't have explained "This is it" in English, let alone Japanese.
Stupid, ambiguous language.
